Was the Iraq war a conspiracy with people such as Wolfowitz or are they the fall guy. Strange that it is shaping up the same way in the UK.
Reporter testifies at British probe
Associated Press
London — British weapons adviser David Kelly held Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications director responsible for rewriting an intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons program to make it "sexier," a BBC journalist testified Tuesday at an inquiry into Dr. Kelly's suicide.
Andrew Gilligan, defence correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corp., said he met Dr. Kelly on May 22 and was told that intelligence officials were concerned that the government had exaggerated the threat posed by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Seven days later, in a report for BBC radio, Mr. Gilligan cited an unidentified official as saying the government had inserted a claim into the September dossier that Mr. Hussein could deploy chemical and biological weapons at 45 minutes notice despite knowing that it was unreliable.
He said intelligence officials were unhappy with the allegation, as it relied on a single, unreliable source. Subsequently, in an article for the Mail on Sunday newspaper, Mr. Gilligan said government communications director Alastair Campbell was responsible for inserting the detail.
The report, vehemently denied by the government, sparked a bitter dispute with the BBC and prompted two parliamentary inquiries into the government's use of intelligence.
Mr. Campbell has denied the allegation, and Dr. Kelly testified to a parliamentary committee that he did not believe that Mr. Campbell had transformed the document.
"I do not believe that at all," Dr. Kelly told the committee on July 15.
Mr. Gilligan told the inquiry, headed by senior appeals judge Lord Hutton, that he had made notes of his meeting with Dr. Kelly in a personal organizer.
He read those annotated notes to the inquiry: "Transformed a week before publication to make it sexier, a classic was the 45 minutes, most things in the dossier were double-sourced but that was single-sourced."
On the issue of Mr. Campbell's allegedly inserting the 45-minute detail, he said: "Campbell, real information but included against our wishes. … He asked if anything else could go in."
Mr. Gilligan insisted that it was Dr. Kelly who first raised Mr. Campbell's name. "He (Dr. Kelly) raised the subject of 45 minutes and he raised the subject of Campbell," he said.
Mr. Gilligan did not name Dr. Kelly in his May 29 report, but his name leaked out — and was quickly confirmed by the Ministry of Defence — after weeks of public squabbling between the government and the BBC. He was found dead three days after testifying to the parliamentary committee.
Mr. Gilligan said Dr. Kelly believed that Mr. Hussein did have a weapons program but that the threat was not as great as the September dossier suggested.
"Dr. Kelly was in no doubt that there was, and he said this and it was one of the things he asked me to say, that there was a WMD program of some sort, but he did not believe the level of threat to the West was as great as the dossier had said," he testified.
A second BBC journalist, Susan Watts, who had also spoken with Dr. Kelly, also reported that the government had seized on the 45-minute claim.
"It was a statement that was made and it just got out of all proportion," she quoted an unidentified source as saying. "They (the government) were desperate for information, they were pushing hard for information which could be released. That was one that popped up, and it was seized on, and it's unfortunate that it was."
Dr. Kelly's suicide has plunged Mr. Blair into the worst political crisis of his six years in office, especially as no weapons of mass destruction have yet been found in Iraq.
The inquiry heard Monday that intelligence officials were concerned about the 45-minute claim.
Martin Howard, deputy chief of defence intelligence, said two members of Britain's Defence Intelligence Staff department had written formally expressing concern about the language used in the September dossier, which made the statement sound like a certainty.
Mr. Howard said British officials received the 45-minute statement on Aug. 30, less than a month before the publication of the dossier.
Julian Miller, chief of the assessments staff of the Cabinet Office, disputed Mr. Gilligan's report that Mr. Blair's government knew the 45-minute statement was wrong before inserting it.
theglobeandmail.com |
